The action-comedy that’s light on both elements finds Ben (Kevin Hart), a high-school security guard who’s just been accepted into Atlanta’s police academy, trying to impress James (Ice Cube), a celebrated detective and the overly protective brother of Ben’s girlfriend, Angela (Tika Sumpter).
“Her” is a love story that’s sad and funny and touching and overflowing with every bit of the inventiveness you’d expect from the visual visionary Spike Jonze.
“August: Osage County” is messy, rambling and dark. But it has a great cast that puts the fun in dysfunctional.
Director Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio revisit the anything-goes late ’80s and early ’90s with such debauchery that it should elicit abject horror but mostly plays as comedy.
Fittingly for a movie all about characters pretending to be other people, “American Hustle” finds writer-director David O. Russell channeling Scorsese, Christian Bale doing his best De Niro and Jeremy Renner seemingly auditioning for the lead in “Funny How?: The Joe Pesci Story.”
In the hands of Emma Thompson, “Mary Poppins” author P.L. Travers is a spoonful of something, all right, but it sure ain’t sugar.
